1. Field of the invention
The invention involves infrared imaging devices particularly imagers with focal plane arrays wherein rows of small infrared detectors are scanned in a Time Delay and Integration mode with an infrared image by means of a scanning mirror.
2. Prior Art
Infrared photoelectric imaging devices in the past have been developed chiefly for use by human observers. As the art of automatic target recognition (ATR) developed, it became clear that successful ATR devices require much more information than the human eye does to identify targets reliably. In other words, the resolution required by ATR devices is at least two times that required by simple navigation and surveillance type imaging systems. In systems where communication channels interconnect the imager with a remote display and/or a memory storage unit, this translates into a requirement for many wide band transmission elements and large banks of memory elements, when storage of the picture elements (pixels) is involved.
The primary object of the invention is to provide a method and means for using the same large focal plane detector arrays for both wide and narrow bandwidth applications.